This post is being made on behalf of the Moderators of the forum as a guideline on reasonable use of the events section of the site.

As a general reminder, all content on this site is visible to anyone with a browser - that includes the people who are giving groups permission to run events. The catalyst for this post is based on feedback from at least one event sponsor who strongly considered pulling the funding for events based on some of the behaviour they witnessed on this forum. It is clearly not in the interest of this hobby that this should happen.

Some issues have occurred in the past and look to be occurring again in terms of how events are being announced and discussed on forum.

At the moments there are 2 options for people who wish to advertise an event:

Create an entry in the calendar. This is currently operating as it should.

Create a topic in the Events. There are problems in terms of how this is operating.

The intention of this post is to clarify what is and is not acceptable in terms of posts relating to events.

Posts relating to events should be made by someone acting on behalf of the event. The post should concentrate on telling people about the event and who to contact if they want to attend as either a participant or a member of the public.

It is acceptable to ask questions about the event once they are framed in a positive matter.

It is not acceptable to conduct an online negative campaign against an event or whoever happens to be organising it. This is irrespective of the background circumstances which have led to that person or group running the event.

'Bumping' topics is tedious. This refers to the practice of posting something of no real value on a topic solely to move it up the topic list. In cases where this is done to remind people that the event is on or that some information has been updated, that is OK. In cases where this mechanism is being used to 'talk up' an event at the expense of other events it is not OK.

There are certain occasions when it is OK to have some discussion on an event thread. This can be constructive, however it is the exception and not the rule

In future we will be less consultative in dealing with unacceptable posts on event threads. In chats or other forums there is usually scope to resolve problems in thread. That is not the case with event threads.

Events that are repeatedly 'bumped' or attract abuse will be deleted. People who carry out that abuse will be banned.